by Iain Ryan
The phone rang in the dark. Romano leaned over and picked it up.
“Is this the new policewoman?”
It was a woman’s voice, soft and thick, with a north Queensland accent.
“Who’s this?” said Romano. She must have slept. “What time is it?”
“It’s late.”
Romano felt her vision begin to spin. “Hold on.” She took the phone to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. “Yeah, this is Constable Romano. What can I…who is this?”
“You were at the club the day before last, Angel’s.”
“Angel City?”
“Yeah. I’ve been away for a bit, but the talk was that you were looking for Sophie. Is it true that she’s dead?”
“Who is this?”
No answer.
“I had a photo of a girl we found dead in one of the hotels. I showed it to a woman called, let me see, the guy on the door called her…” Romano reached for her notebook and realised she was no longer in uniform.
“That was Sal,” said the woman. “She told the person who told me. Word’s been getting around.”
“And you say her name is Sophie? You have a last name for her?”
“Marr.”
“Can you—”
“Don’t come back to the club. You fucked up going there the other day.”
“Sophie Marr, double R?”
“Yeah,” the woman said and hung up.
Romano ran to the living room and scratched through the mess for her notebook. She wrote fast: the name, the time (2:36 AM) and anything else she could sense (a woman, the call had the close sharp reverb of a pay phone). Romano sat back and tried to decide: sleep or work.
Three hours to dawn.
If Sophie Marr checked out, Denny and Chandler would never agree to notify the family themselves. And it might take all morning to get it confirmed.
Her head ached.
It had to be sleep.
Romano had pills. She took two, crushed them in the kitchen mortar, and snorted them back. It worked. In the bedroom, she barely got herself undressed before passing out.
15
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
There were no signs of Chandler and Denny at the station that morning. Two of the DPU guys were in, hunched over newspapers in the kitchenette. Romano went to the office and hit the switch on the computer.
The sleep had helped.
The hair of the dog helped more.
The monitor came to life. A browser search for Sophie Marr—the name from the late-night call—turned up a photo of victim number two, the OD: a picture of a teenaged version of her holding a giant fish. She was a pretty kid, long blonde hair. The photo ran alongside a news piece from the nineties on a fishing competition.
Romano searched again. There was another more recent shot: Sophie stood between two men, the three of them sipping giant beer steins.
She printed them both out and turned to the police database. No Sophie or Sophia Marr, but there were two others Marrs in there, both criminals. Donald Marr, aged fifty-three, did a stint on the mainland for assault and had been in trouble since. He was listed in a pub brawl on Tunnel in 2002. Occupation: Retiree. He didn’t live like one. His home address was just off the boulevard around the hill from Sienna Beach. The other Marr in the database was Silvia, a sister, aged twenty-six, deceased. She had a petty theft write-up but no charges. Romano dragged the incident report out of storage and it rang like a bell. Silvia Marr, accused of ripping off two male tourists. Location of alleged crime: The Gold Point Hotel.
A web search for Silvia brought in the jackpot. There she was, standing over a park bench, next to Sophie. In the background, a mugshot match: Donald Marr digging through an esky. Another snap showed them standing with a thin woman with long greying hair, their mother by the looks. The parents smiled at the camera. The sisters did not. These photos were older, pasted up on a church website, The Holly Covenant Fellowship Family Picnic 1997.
This was it. The family.
Romano noted it all down and pulled a street directory off the shelf.
The Marr house sat in a prime location, on a stretch off the boulevard circling Point Burgess. The road dropped away on one side there, down though thick mountainous brush to a quiet beach. Across the street the houses were all two-story renovated mansions, barring a few faded timber shacks. The Marr house was one of these.
Romano knocked on the glass of the front door.
Nothing moved inside. The house felt empty.
“Hello,” she said, and knocked again.
The block was wide and long. Behind the house, Romano found a washing line filled with clean clothes. A large fishing boat sat in the corner, a battered caravan on the other side. She knocked on the caravan’s window and peered in.
“They gone to the mainland.”
Romano turned. A rugged old man stood by the fence. He was draped in a bright satin sarong at odds with his weathered skin and face.
“No one’s in there,” he added. “Thought you might be coming round sooner or later. They said the new copper was a bit more of a worker than those other two.”
“They’re gone?” said Romano.
“Left yesterday, in the morning. That girl of theirs…” The man shook his head.
“So the mainland police called them?”
“Guessing so. There was all sorts of—”
“Reg, who’s that out there?” It came from the screen door behind him. Romano could just make out a figure standing there.
“Just the new copper, Linda. She’s looking for Don and Mary. I was just saying g’day.”
“I need you to come in now. I need some help in the garage,” said the voice. “Stop bothering the poor woman.”
“It’s fine, ma’am,” said Romano.
“Reg,” said the voice.
The man gathered the sarong with one hand and said, “I better be off. I’ll tell them you stopped by.”
He went back inside.
Romano rang her contact in the coroner’s office from the car. The autopsy was in. They were about to fax it over.
“And their names?” said Romano.
“Dental has the female as Sophia Maureen Marr. But her parents identified the girl this morning. Drug overdose, as suspected. Open and shut.”
“And the other one?”
“Thomas Michael Bachelard. Prior arrest, had his prints on file. His family are due any minute. High tox levels in him, too, but cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head. There’s a few unusual bits and pieces, though. They’re in the report.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re in the report,” the technician repeated. “It’s a mess.”
The report was waiting for her at the station house. Chandler and Denny were at the reception desk, playing darts. At the centre of the board was a picture of Inspector O’Shea, from the police newsletter. Romano stood by the fax machine and scanned the report to the rhythmic thud of their game.
There was more to Sophie Marr’s overdose. The blood work was inconclusive. Heroin cut with something ugly. Female deceased should have been able to sustain this dose. Suspected poisoning. Bachelard’s had traces of cocaine and meth. He had gun residue on his hand consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot at close range, but two of the fingers on his other hand were broken and he had heavy bruising around the neck, arms, and shoulders. He had suffered a head wound—something heavy—before the fatal gunshot. He’d obviously been in a fight, and one telling, underlined detail pointed to why: Male deceased has internal tearing of the anus consistent with forced penetration. Swab analysis reveals semen, blood, and lubricating gel. Samples forwarded to pathology for further analysis.
Denny pulled the darts out of board, the final one coming from under O’Shea’s eye.
“The kid up in the Gold Point was raped,” said Romano.
Chandler lobbed his first dart.
Thwack.
“The girl?” said Denny.
/> Thwack.
“No, the guy,” said Romano. “He’s some senator’s kid. This is probably going to blow up a little. It won’t just float past now.”
Chandler gave her a blank look and threw the next dart. It landed with a sharp metallic ping and bounced off the board onto the floor.
“Shit.”
“The female vic was Sophie Marr. Either of you know her? Her family lives up the road.”
Denny frowned.
Thwack.
Chandler squatted down for the fallen dart. “I know them, the Marrs. They’ve been over here since forever. Best avoided. There’s never been a better time than now to let the mainland boys do their thing.”
“So they’ll send someone?”
Chandler handed the darts to Denny.
“They’ll send someone or they won’t,” said Chandler. “Just stay out of it. That’s your fucking job. If you don’t do that here, you’re headed for...”
“For what?” she said.
Denny lined up his shot. Just before he let go, he said, “Remember whose house you’re living in.”
Thwack.
“And why,” he added.
The Gold Point autopsy reports joined the collage of horror on Romano’s living room floor. She looked the whole thing over, checking signees and interviewers and dates. Chandler and Denny were right; this house had belonged to someone who got involved. Detective Sergeant Bill Dranger’s name was on every scrap of paper, every suicide, and every semi-serious investigation going. The whole show, the whole force. And now he was dead.
Dranger’s own death was watertight. It was no whodunnit: Dranger shot himself in quiet, unordinary circumstances. There were no open leads, no pending court appearances, no reprimands or allegations. It looked as though the old bloke had had enough and picked a lull to get it done. His final case was a kidnapping down the island. They got the kid back. Nothing special at all, according to the report.
Romano had another couple of drinks and mulled it over. As another humid night started up, she put her notes and files in order, separating out anything that looked mildly relevant for the mainland detectives. They’d be here in the morning.
Around ten, she was running close to dry. The local place would be closed and, while she had a buzz on, she decided she could drive. Romano backed the cruiser out onto the street, lit a cigarette, and took off. The coast road took her up through a small corridor of bushland into The Strip. The neon stung her eyes, all the flashing signs and fountains. Out the windscreen, she tracked the spinning Ferris wheel of Fortunes—a giant roulette wheel—and the subdued palms of the Chateau Agri, the high-roller fantasy of Casino Detrix, the Gold Point’s shimmering Zippo on the other side, and the gaudy hotels and bars that filled out the rest. As the road rose and bowed around Point Hallahan, she thought about the pub for a moment but kept driving. There was a small twenty-four-hour kiosk round further, down in the little village by The Bond Mirage, one of the island’s safer spots. As she rounded the bend to Point Burgess, she remembered another reason to keep moving.
She would pass the Marr house.
As it came into view, Romano slowed.
The lights were on.
She noticed a solitary figure standing in the glass verandah and felt a pang of recognition. Even lit from the back, in silhouette, she knew the man.
Romano guided the cruiser onto the road shoulder and killed the ignition, all without taking her eyes off the house.
The figure remained. The man.
As she stepped into the yard, he disappeared. The front door unlocked and opened. A thin fluorescent bulb bolted to the wall began to flicker and hum.
She knew him as soon as he opened the screen: The man from AA. Jim or Bob or Tim. A stern-looking guy, half surfer, half bruiser. A thick beard under hard eyes.
“What are you doing here?” she said, no control in her voice.
“You better come in,” said the man. “We need to talk.”
16
Tuesday, September 7, 2004
Laura Romano looked like hell up close. Her eyes had a creamy red hue to them and seemed to elude focus. A ginger crop of her fringe lay greased to her forehead with sweat. She moved slowly, but was well trained. As soon as she stepped inside she went into cop mode, scanning the room, the exits, his whole body. She kept herself braced. She stayed by the door.
“I can’t remember your name,” she said.
“Jim.”
“Jim what?”
Her hand slid down the side of her gym tights, resting on a hip. Muscle memory. Drunk off her ass and reaching for a gun that wasn’t there.
“Harris. Jim Harris.”
“What are you doing here, Jim?”
“House-sitting.”
“You armed?”
“Yes.” Harris lifted his shirt and showed her. “And you aren’t, so sit down. Do you want a drink or are you okay?”
She followed him to the kitchen, keeping back. She scoped the place. The Marr house had a tidy, almost retro feel to it, not what anyone would expect from Don. His wife Mary had cleaned the place top to bottom before they left; working the grief out or hiding something, Harris couldn’t tell.
He took a can of beer from the fridge.
“Here.”
She took it. “I’m glad you’re not my sponsor.” She cracked the beer, and as she took her first sip she spotted the police files. They were spread across the kitchen table. “Are these…” she said, picking up Marr’s pathology report. “How’d you get these?”
“No one’s coming from the mainland,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Brisbane CIB aren’t sending anyone over. I’m it. They sent the stuff to me.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Are you with us? No one mentioned anything to me about there being another cop on the island.”
“Retired,” he said.
“You don’t look so retired. And if you’re not on duty, you can’t be walking around with these, or that piece. I’m taking these. I don’t want you anywhere near this. I don’t even know who you are.”
She began to gather the files together.
“You aren’t taking shit,” he said. “You’re drunk off your arse, and you have no idea how this place really works.” He took a step closer to her and she squared up. “You’re retired too, Romano. You just don’t know it yet.”
Her eyes stayed on him but the punch didn’t come. “I…”
“What?” he said. “I know who you are. If I’m a guy who can get these, imagine all the other things I can find out. I know exactly who you are. So let me tell you this—”
“No, this is—”
“Listen to me. You and me, all this. Same deal. Except I’m a day or two in front of you. Guess who notified the Marrs? It wasn’t Denny or Chandler was it? Or you?”
“So you’re telling me that Brisbane have given you the green light.”
“If you call them, they’ll string you along, tell you the investigation is still pending, some bullshit like that. They don’t care what happens over here. They only care a little bit when it involves a senator’s kid, and even still, all of his father’s clout doesn’t buy him much. It got him me instead of nothing.”
“You?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“This”—she nodded her head around—“This is a pile of who-knows-what. I’m leaving.”
“You sure?”
“Oh, I’m coming back. I’ll be back in the morning, and you better be here. If your story checks out, we can…” She stopped. She put her beer on the table. “We’ll talk in the morning.”
She went to the door and let herself out without another word. Harris watched her pull a sloppy U-turn in the police Land Rover before motoring away.
After it was done, the Marr house returned to its eerie stillness. The ocean heaved in the distance. Wind flapped the clothes on the hoist. Harris poured the rest of Romano’s beer down the sink and went back to his search. He checked th
e bathroom, then the second bedroom, and then the ceiling cavity. He turned the place over.
Empty.
Mary had a nice supply of under-the-counter pharmaceuticals hidden in the bathroom. Don had a stash of porn in one of the high cupboards, a lot of moderately nasty stuff. That was it.
Harris went outside. He checked the yard, the exterior. The boat shed yielded results. Stashed in an old esky:
Five eight-balls of cocaine.
Half a brick of tar.
A big bag of weed.
All skimmed from a recent shipment. Dev was convinced they were light, and here it was.
Don the idiot ex-con. Don playing with fire.
O’Shea would have words, even with a dead daughter in the picture.
Harris went over to the caravan. He’d been putting it off. Everyone on the island knew that this was where the two girls—Silvia and Sophie—had lived on and off for years. According to Reg next door, Silvia had used it for a few months two years back, right before she ended up in Drainland.
The van was a silver relic, worn back to a matte finish by the salt wind. Don had given up on mowing around it and the van stood surrounded by a knee-high moat of grass. Harris waded in and tried the door, finding the handle stiff but unlocked. The smell of mothballs and dust drifted out. Inside, the van had been ransacked; every door in the small kitchen hung open, the contents spread across the floor and table. The bedroom was the same deal. Someone had turned the place upside down. Harris walked through slowly and carefully, lifting items with a knife he found on the kitchen bench. They were looking for something small, but apart from that the scene told him very little. It wasn’t recent work.
He moved on. In the van’s tiny bathroom, pinned to a smudged mirror, he found a picture of the two sisters sitting on the beach. They both wore large round sunglasses and hats, very Jackie Onassis, both giving the camera a regal wave. It was a strange sensation, seeing them before everything else. Harris took the photo and brought it close.
He remembered Silvie. He remembered the way she felt in the back room of The Theodor Club. He tried to let the memory wash through him but it was no good. Four months clear of the place, but he still wanted it. An excuse was coming together in his mind.
